Alas, Biafra

R.F. Côté is a mailartist of prodigious imagination, sending me card after card that resembles the others only tangentially. This card opens with a gentle dreamy front. A single 55-cent stamp, and its surrounding border, take up more than half the side of the card


R.F. Côté, Obverse of Number 10 of 18 (13 Mar 2005)
The back, however, is another story.Upon a textured and painted surface, there sits a deflated plastic bubble, yellow-orange in color so that it obscures the image it ostensibly protects. If we push the bubble around, we can detect a few thin black African boys, apparently thin, and the sadness of their faces and the deflated and stomachlike bubble remind me of my memories of pictures of the Biafran 1960s.


R.F. Côté, Reverse of Number 10 of 18 (13 March 2005)
un violon d'ingres